ee -- temporary file privilege escalation

Details

VuXML ID

726dd9bd-8f25-11da-8c1d-000e0c2e438a

Discovery

2006-01-11

Entry

2006-01-27

Problem description

The ispell_op function used by ee(1) while executing spell
check operations employs an insecure method of temporary file
generation. This method produces predictable file names based
on the process ID and fails to confirm which path will be over
written with the user.
It should be noted that ispell does not have to be installed
in order for this to be exploited. The option simply needs to
be selected.

Impact

These predictable temporary file names are problematic
because they allow an attacker to take advantage of a race
condition in order to execute a symlink attack, which could
allow them to overwrite files on the system in the context of
the user running the ee(1) editor.